Shedding Skin ... ny Jeans

I suppose you’ve all read about how I plan to boycott pants. My last post on this subject was all about the atrocities we’re all been forced to commit under the reign of low rise jeans. Now I mean to tackle the subject of their skinny nature mostly around the ankle area.

I was a child of the 80s which means that I wore tapered pants for more than a decade, because we were still wearing them for a good portion of the 90s. However by 1995, I’m certain I was the only one wearing them. I totally remember when flare jeans came in fashion. All the women a generation older than me scoffed heartlessly, “Bell bottoms are in style again” like they’d all been on that train before.

Back then I couldn’t understand those matrons who didn’t change their tapered jeans for flares. I would have given my left leg for a pair of flares (though that would have defeated the purpose). And now the situation has come full circle on me. I’ve become exactly like those hopeless old broads. You see, the idea of cramming my heels back into a pair of tight-around-the-ankle pants makes me break out in hives.

The point of skinny jeans and tapered jeans is to accentuate a woman’s hips. If she’s got no hips, the pants do a little magic trick and she looks like she’s got hips. For a woman like me (remember – built like a Christmas tree), I’ve already got hips. Whenever I get dressed, I’m always trying to work the opposite magic trick – make it look like my hips are smaller.

Is it to save fabric? This is the conversation between the designers.

“See? We can cut the pants so low around the waist that they cover her bikini briefs when she’s trying them on in the dressing room.”

“What about when she sits down?”

“Not our problem. She’ll buy them and then be too lazy or ashamed to take them back.”

“Okay. What else do you want to do to cut costs?”

“We can ditch the whole flare/boot cut/regular cut philosophy and make them so tight around the ankle that there’s no room for airspace between her and the jeans. We’ll call it retro even though we’re using much less fabric all the way up the leg than we did in the 80s. We can make three pairs of jeans out of the same amount of material that it took us to make one pair of flares.”

“How will she get her leg in there?”

“We’ll make them stretchy.”

Give that man an award and tell him to get his hand out of my pants.